December 7, 2010

December 7th: Katie Jean Shinkle

There Are So Many People Who Want To See You While You’re Home

For mothers who need avenged, a son’s killing, this son’s
killing a weakness of mother, dear Mother,
Happy Valentine’s Day, Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas,
The Furies seek and destroy, do not kill anyone
including a parent
this parent, apparent, we are backing up and down
we are backing up back back it up back back it up
and velocity, killing me, this is killing me—

Even now, the Justice, this Justice, the neighbor says
she doesn’t want you talking to her little girl
anymore, she doesn’t know you, doesn’t know you
the Justice the Justice. Before a court of law,

these weights and measures, a sword to the sky and scales
so many scales, this Athenian tribe,
this impaneled jury, this hung and hung jury.

In reverse, an upheaval. Merry, Happy, Happy—
Happy, Merry, Happy.

Katie Jean Shinkle is Assistant Poetry Editor for DIAGRAM. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Eleven Eleven Journal, American Poetry Journal, Bluestem Magazine and NANO Fiction, among others.

promissory

Welcome to Delirious Hem

ORIGIN STORY: It was 2006. Some of us wished the women poets we admired would write more about poetry and poetics, experimental, post-avant. Some of them weren’t writing about these things at all. Why not? They’re busy, some of us surmised. Some of them were writing about these things, but some of us were greedy, and wanted them to write more. Some of them were men, and some of us wanted some of them to write about experimental women poets, gender performativity on the page, masculinity via grotesque, etc. Wanted some of them to write about some of these things more/at all.

What if some of us built a platform? What if the parameters were informal, relatively boundless? What if the form invited conversation and huzzah?

But some of us are busy, too. Some of us can’t possibly fit one more dish on our plates, and some of us can’t possibly spin one more plate in the air, and some of us can’t possibly...

Well, here’s what some of us offer all of us: It’s a blog, it’s a poetics journal, it’s a platform. From time to time, a post will appear. It will be exciting, provocative, fresh, or bombastic. It will go with your eyes. It will never stop stop making sense, it will always love you, it will probably work.

Discussion in the comment boxes below is ecstatically encouraged, with the understanding not all members of Pussipo are likely to agree on any given topic (oh how rare, but how delicious the disagreements too), not all contributors herein are members of Pussipo, each contributor is the rightful possessor of her or his own opinion, and some contributors may be more inclined to respond to comments directed their way than others. Which is just to say what should be obvious: We are various. We aim to mix it up.